darkness becomes me
by TolkienGirl
Summary: Éowyn thinks, how much is enough? when they lower her mother beneath the mound. (Eowyn, pre-TTT. Warning for dark content/sexual harassment.)


She does not sing at her mother's funeral.

"You are too young," says old Merdwyn, her face a map of lines, gray as grief. And then, foolishly, as only the old are foolish: "You have not seen enough yet, of death."

Éowyn knows she must not speak sharply. This old woman is not of royal blood, but that does not matter. It never matters in Meduseld, when it comes to how their eyes and voices must fall upon others. Éowyn chews her lips.

Éowyn thinks, _how much is enough?_ when they lower her mother beneath the mound.

.

"What are you doing out here?"

Éomer is coaxing his first beard. If truth be told, it is not coming along very well. Éowyn pushes her hair over her shoulders, rests her shoulders against the slope of the mound. "Talking to mother."

"Mother is dead," Éomer says carefully. It has been four years. They have flashed by quickly, but they have taken many things with them. "You're old enough to understand that."

Yes, Éowyn understands. Understands the copper tang of the stains on her father's armor, how Éomer had called out his name— _once_ —how Mother had fainted—

How Mother had never really gotten up again.

Years ago, now. _Years_. The only warmth left is that which soil can hold, till summer comes again. Éowyn curves her feet beneath her. The grass is damp. "No," she murmurs, her hand carding through the flowers that spring up in the grass. "No, not here."

And her brother's brow wrinkles, for he can only see the grave.

.

Her brother's cast-off, youthful armor no longer fits her. She sucks in a breath, but her chest will not be flat again. Her maids bring bolts of wool and silk, coarser than the silk that comes from Gondor. "New gowns, milady. You are a woman now."

She knows she is a woman, has known that since she woke to bloodstains on her sheets, has known that as close and unshakeable as a fever, as a tremor, as a dream.

"I don't want gowns," she says snappishly, and runs to find her practice sword.

The blisters on her thumbs are a welcome pain. They are something she can earn, something she can ask for.

.

Summer comes again. The man at her uncle's table is broad-shouldered, in leather and silver with a horn at his side. His eyes are sharp, his profile almost kingly. _Almost_. He is too rough, too eager.

Éowyn likes him at once. If he were a little younger, a little softer of heart and harder of resolve, perhaps she would love him.

But Boromir of Gondor does not spare her many glances. He spars with her brother, pores over maps and negotiations with her uncle, and rides south when the weather turns cold.

.

She runs the edge of her tongue over her lips, chapped by the wind.

Her uncle has been troubled by the news from Gondor. Her uncle rides to Isengard, but he does not take Éomer with him.

By the clash and clatter of swordplay from the training rooms, Éomer is venting his frustrations against more tangible targets.

"Are you not cold in this winter air, milady?"

That voice might as well be a hand slipping beneath the collar of her dress, caressing her spine.

Éowyn turns, knife-sharp, and finds herself face-to-face with Gríma.

"I like the air," she says. "It is not so _close_ as it is inside."

The lank fur around his throat smells like dead and creeping things. Éowyn wishes her uncle had not promoted him from the role of a humble scribe to a second-class advisor. He seems like the sort of _thing_ to climb.

.

"We never spar anymore," she says one night, over cups of wine.

Éomer pauses, lifts a brow over the edge of his goblet—an expression perfected in childhood. Only, she never knew Éomer's childhood, because he was always the elder. Some days, when he marshals his men and chants orders, she wonders if he knew his own childhood, or if he had one at all. "You are a lady of the court."

"I am bored, and lonely, and that ought to be a brother's task to mend." She stares him down. "Moreover, I have not stopped training. I doubt even you could hold a blade against me."

And that is all he has ever needed—a challenge.

Later in the evening, metal clangs against metal, and she feels almost free. _Almost._

.

Éowyn wakes with a scream.

Ghastly, his face looms over her. There is a candle in his hand, and he hushes her between the flickers. "No need to be afraid, milady—there was a warning of fire—I came to make certain you were safe."

"Where is the fire?"

"They put it out."

But she does not smell smoke. She gathers her robes around her, and hates the way his eyes take in every line, every shadow of her room, of _her_ , with something like hunger in their depths.

.

"I wish, Uncle, that you would send Gríma away," she says one day. It has taken many weeks to find him alone, many hours to work up the courage. She, Éowyn, who has always been courageous.

 _You are a woman. You can be strong._

 _You are a woman. Ah, there is the fear._

Théoden stares at her. For a moment, she wonders if he knows who she is, what she is asking.

"No, no," he mutters. Then he calls for Gríma, and she—the _coward_ —runs.

.

"Why do you have to go?"

"Because Théodred has not returned." Éomer pauses as he fixes the buckles on his bracers, brow furrowing. "What else would you have me do?"

 _Nothing_ , she thinks. _I would only have us be young again, or wish myself beneath the earth_. "I am only worried for your safety," she says, and what she does not say is that Gríma cornered her in the passage at midnight only a day ago, that his hand was on her throat.

He wept afterward, when she had fought her way out. He had begged forgiveness, and somehow, that was uglier still.

Éomer pulls her close, so that her chin crashes against the steel plate at his shoulder. But she breathes more deeply, with his arm around her, than she has in months. "I will return. You have the dagger I gave you?"

She wonders what he knows.

But how much is enough?


End file.
